Category Archives: Popular Culture Musings

Sports media is often a place ripe with racial, class, and gendered meanings; it often is a site where stereotypes and profiling are articulated; where bodies, particularly bodies of color, are subject to scrutiny and examination, ridicule and demonization. Sports media, especially when the coverage moves beyond the game, is often dominated by generalizations and grandiose arguments that spill over outside of the arena and playing field. This has been evident with two recent columns about John Wall and Aaron Hernandez, both of which extrapolate meaning and pathology from tattoos – or better said the meaning in an inked body of color.

In a recent column, Jason Reid cautioned the Wizards (he provides clarification here) against signing a contract extension with Wall because of his decision to get and unveil his tattoos:

Posing shirtless recently for an Instagram photo, Wall revealed several tattoos. Wall’s interest in body art is surprising, considering he previously said he did not have tattoos because of concerns over his image for marketing reasons. Many NBA players do have tattoos, and Wall isn’t breaking new ground in sharing his ink with fans through social media.

But not every player flip-flops on a topic in such a public way. Factor in that Wall is expected to receive a huge payday from the Wizards next month, and the timing of his tattoo revelation raises questions about his decision making. For a franchise with a history of backing the wrong players, that’s food for thought. . .

Reid makes clear that Wall’s decision to get tattoos leads him to question his mindset, his character, and his priorities since he previously stated that he wasn’t getting any tattoos because of a potential reaction from fans and the organization. Yet, now he has them, causing Reid to wonder about Wall’s focus on the game and the fans. It’s gotta be the ink.

Reid’s effort to read meaning into Wall’s tattooed body is nothing compared to Jason Whitlock’s recent column, which is disturbing even by Whitlock’s standards. Amid the many troubling points of “analysis” that nostalgically pine for popular culture and a sports world of yesteryear, Whitlock uses the arrest of Aaron Hernandez as an instance to pathologize and demonize today’s athletes, and accordingly goes in on tattoos:

Athlete covered in tattoos is linked to several violent acts, including “accidentally” shooting a man in the face. Modern athletes carry guns. They do drugs. They mimic rappers and gangster pop-culture icons.

Athletes want street cred, and they costume themselves in whatever is necessary to get it. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, etc., were the first to recognize the importance of authentic street cred when it came selling product to American youth.

Sadly Whitlock was not done:

When he stood in chains before a judge at his arraignment, in a white T-shirt and his arms decorated in ink, Hernandez did not look out of place. Guilty or innocent, he looked like someone who had prepared for this moment. He didn’t look like an athlete. He looked like an ex-con…

We can no longer distinguish bad from good. We no longer even aspire to be good; it has considerably less value. That’s what Aaron Hernandez represents, to me. Popular culture has so eroded the symbolic core principles at the root of America’s love affair with sports that many modern athletes believe their allegiance to gangster culture takes precedence over their allegiance to the sports culture that made them rich and famous.

There is so much wrong here that I am not sure where to start but let me unpack a few arguments. (1) He seems to argue that America’s crime problem (despite declining crime rates) is the result of its faulty values. Popular culture is the teacher to blame. The celebration of Jay-Z and Tony Soprano (and I am not fooled by the inclusion of Tony Soprano to obfuscate from the racial arguments) has created a culture of criminality, as evidenced by Aaron Hernandez.

Whitlock writes that Hernandez, “stayed true to his boyz from the ‘hood. He mimicked the mindset of the pop-culture icons we celebrate today.” While acknowledging the costs and consequences of “a 40-year drug war, mass incarceration,” Hernandez is a product of “a steady stream of Mafia movies, three decades of gangster rap and two decades of reality TV have wrought: athletes who covet the rebellious and marketable gangster persona”—a little nostalgia to go with Whitlock’s simplicity and reductionist linear narrative.

In amazing level of erasure of history, of violence, Whitlock, who clearly plays a sociologist, psychologist and media studies scholar on both TV and the Internet, pontificates how to thwart crime and violence: revamp the television guide and top-40. Yes, it’s got to be the television. Rather than address structural realities, it is time for politicians, activists, and communities to address the real menace: popular culture. If only he was kidding.

(2) I wonder if he or others who like to blame rap and popular culture for everything invoke these arguments in other cases or just those involving people of color. I must have missed an examination of the listening habits of Adam Lanza or James Holmes? I wonder what sort of influence hip-hop and Allen Iverson had on the Boston bombers, Catholic priests, or Wall Street executives. Clearly, it is time for Whitlock and others to listen to Michael Franti’s “It’s a crime to be broke in America.”

They say they blame it on a song When someone kills a cop What music did they listen to When they bombed Iraq? Give me one example so I can take a sample No need to play it backwards If you wanna hear the devil Cause music’s not the problem It didn’t cause the bombin’ But maybe they should listen To the songs of people starving…

More than reminding me of the scapegoating of music which truly masks the criminalization and demonization of bodies of color (nobody has made issue of George Zimmerman’s tattoos), I recall a response to David Whitley’s piece about Colin Kaepernick because sadly I can just remix this “Dear Mr. Whitlock” because same message different day.

We have spent time discussing, debating, and arguing over Paula Deen. From print pundits to cable-news talking heads, much has been said of the TV personality’s use of the “N-Word,” her firing from the Food Network, and whether “in her heart she is a racist.”

But a closer look at the details of the civil suit brought against Deen and her Southern food empire suggests a bigger and more troubling problem than the privately held beliefs of a single person.

While employed by Deen’s parent company, Paula Deen Enterprises, plaintiff Lisa Jackson alleges that she was subjected and witness to racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Pornography was regularly visible in the workplace; sexist comments were commonplace. Jackson claimed that in one instance, in which she was made responsible for catering the wedding of Bubba Heirs (Deen’s brother), Deen described the style she was looking for in the following way.

Well what I would really like is a bunch of little niggers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around. Now that would be a true southern wedding, wouldn’t it? But we can’t do that because the media would be on me about that.

Deen denies the specifics, but this isn’t the only accusation made. The lawsuit claims that:

—Black employees are forbidden from using the customer bathroom; white employees are allowed to use any bathroom

—African Americans assigned to the back of the house are forbidden from going to locations where customers can see them

—Racial slurs were commonplace

The racially hostile environment depicted in the Jackson lawsuit is corroborated to an important degree by an independent inquiry into The Lady and Sons, Deen’s famed restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. An attorney for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a national civil-rights organization, said he discovered “evidence of systemic racial discrimination and harassment.”

He found that Deen and her managers regularly referred one black cook as “my little monkey.” According to one current and two former employees, Deen pays and promotes black and white workers differently. Deen also “preferred white and light-skinned blacks” to work with customers while “darker-skinned blacks were relegated to ‘back-of-the-house operations.'”

The issue, said Rainbow PUSH attorney Robert Patillo in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, isn’t Deen’s racist worldview. The issue is the potential for a powerful individual’s racist worldview to manifest itself into discriminatory workplace policies. A black worker threatened to report the restaurant to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was told: “You don’t have any civil rights here.” Other workers also feared retaliation.

Raquel Cepeda is hip-hop. Her work, her experiences, and her voice encapsulate the history and aesthetics of the hip-hop generation. Cepeda, a leading journalist whose work has appeared in People, the Associated Press, The Village Voice, MTV News, CNN.com, has shaped the conversation about hip-hop for decades. Her film, Bling: A Planet Rock, “takes a hard-hitting look at how the flashy world of commercial hip-hop played a significant role in the 10-year civil war in Sierra Leone, West Africa” and her edited collection And It Don’t Stop: The Best Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years are two significant works within the hip-hop landscape. A career of reflecting on artistry, identity, culture, and a generation looking for voice, Cepeda turns inward with her memoir Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria Books, 2013). Telling the story of a young women whose life was turned upside down over and over again, Bird of Paradise is her story of redemption, of a her search to understand her identity in a society that told her over and over again that she did not matter.

Bird of Paradise speaks to the growing intersections of ethnography, memoir and science. It points to the changing nature of looking backward not only for exploring personal histories but those of the communities. The work points to a growing willingness among the hip-hop generation to push aside conventions, to expose personal vulnerability and uncertainty alongside of scientific discovery.

At one level it is a story of hip-hop, and how it influenced her life. Hip-hop offered acceptance otherwise unavailable outside of paradise. As with many books on the history of hip-hop and memoirs about members of the hip-hop generation, Cepeda highlights the environmental factors that gave rise to the hip-hop generation. Violence, alienation, invisibility and failing schools all shaped Cepeda’s childhood, which was defined by instability resulting from abandonment, abuse, and difficulty finding acceptance and peace. For Cepeda these painful experiences didn’t simply define her childhood but contributed to her love of hip-hop, which spoke to her, have her voice, and provided a nurturing home that had been absent through her early years.

Where others sought to define her identity, to see her as a wanna-be, neither white nor black, as stuck-up, where society sought to render her voice, her passion, and her joy invisible, hip-hop provided hope and power. Bird of Paradise speaks to the importance hip-hop has on a generation. It provided her with the tools to navigate the sometimes-competing demands of “the old-school social and cultural standards of our parents, their respective homelands, and this American one, the latter growing increasingly hostile to our presence.” Hip-Hop, from Public Enemy to Spoken Word, from graffiti to journalism, provided a path through the trials and tribulations associated with the double consciousness and the contradictions that defined her early life. Her work as a journalist, her contributions as a documentarian and the book itself are the flower that sprouted from the seeds planted by hip-hop

“Ain’t that a “b****” “Stop “b****ing” “Stop acting like a “b****” “You go to the basket like a “b****” “You throw like a “b****” “You hit like a “b****” “I ain’t your “b****”

The “B word” is ubiquitous within our contemporary culture. It can be heard on television, at the student recreation center, on college campuses, on the street, at schools, in songs, and in countless other spaces. Notwithstanding this over saturation, the word remains entrenched within a history of violence and patriarchy. No amount of mental gymnastics and argumentation can take away from its history, and ideological baggage. It is a slur; it is demeaning, disrespectful, and hurtful.

“‘B*tch’ is a slur; and there’s no doubt that the word has a female referent, and a nonhuman one at that,” writes Sherryl Kleinman, Matthew B. Ezzell, and A. Corey Frost. As a dehumanizing slur, this word is wrapped up within a larger history of violence against women, rape, domestic abuse, and state-sanctioned and state practiced violence against women. Its meaning and origins cannot be understood apart from slavery, lynchings, war, forced sterilization, vaginal ultrasounds, labor exploitation and abuse, and so much more. Just go to Google, type the word in the search box and you will see how many different images that normalize and justify violence against women through the dehumanizing deployment of this slur.

In researching for this piece, I came across a site that shocked and sickened me. I found myself asking how, why, and what we can do to stem the tide of dehumanizing language, normalized violence, and the brutality of sexism and misogyny. In “How to Smack a B*tch,” Matt Stone provides readers with a “how to” list, disgustingly describing each type of slap with a casualness. As part of a website called the “guy code,” this sort of “logic” imagines violence against women, and seeing women as less than human as both normal and required to be a real man. While easy to dismiss this outrageous and reprehensible post and page as the extreme (or try to describe it as “satire” as a way to insulate from rightful indignation and condemnation), it speaks to the ways that the language of sexism normalizes violence, discrimination, inequality, and injustice.

Irrespective of this history and the connections seen above, the defenders of the word often notes that the “B word,” as it is used to describe men and women, is not sexist because (1) it is just a word (2) the meaning has changed and (3) men use it to describe other men and therefore it’s not offensive to women. Let me respond to each. (1) it’s not just a word; words matter.

“Words can elevate or deflate us. Words often precede action. Harsh words are exchanged and a fight breaks out. Words tell us, empirically, about increases or decreases in inequality; old inequalities in new guises; false power among members of an oppressed group (more on that, later); unconscious sexism, racism, or other forms of inequality; subordinates’ resistance to injustice” (from Reclaiming Critical Analysis: The Social Harms of ‘B*tch’).

(2) Its meaning remains entrenched in misogyny and patriarchy and (3) it doesn’t matter. The claims that the word has been recuperated, that its meaning has changed over time, and that because men now use it in relationship to other men it precludes a gendered meaning is simplistic and fails to account for the broader implications of the word. It fails to account for what men are saying when they use it to describe another male. Take the examples from above: “stop whining” – “stop “b****ing”; “don’t bring that weak sh*t to basket” – “stop playin like a “b****” or “I don’t want to get you something to drink; I ain’t your “b****.”

In each case, the B-word is used to convey weakness, subservience, and undesirability through a constructed idea of femininity. Whether talking about physical power, intellectual strength or control, the b-word serves as a stand-in for female. “Stop acting like a girl;” “You throw or ball like a girl [or woman];” “I ain’t a woman.” All of these phrases, and the dehumanizing deployment in regards to men demonstrate how the “B word” is wrapped in the logic of sexism; the worst thing one can be is a female within the misogynist imagination.

With all the talk within social media circles since Ava DuVernay won best director at the Sundance Film Festival, I cannot remember anticipating a film as much I anticipated Middle of Nowhere. While a testament to the film’s use of social media, my excitement reflected its storyline and its offering of a humanizing story. The New York Times aptly described the film as follows: a “poignant portrait of Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a nurse doing hard time in emotional limbo while her husband serves a prison sentence.” The Los Angeles Times summarizes the film’s story as somewhat classic with a story of marital crossroads, personal transformation, and self discovery: “the focus is on the couple’s relationship and, gradually, on a different kind of journey that Ruby is making, the classic one of self-actualization, of finding yourself when you feel emotionally in the middle of nowhere, a journey that allows for no shortcuts or easy answers.” While the film does play upon dominant themes, its embrace of tropes and themes specific to the history of African American film, and its intervention in the hegemony of dehumanizing narratives, especially those surrounding prisons, illustrates a film that is battling and challenging in a myriad of ways.

Middle of Nowhere gives voice to an all-too-familiar circumstance facing million of American families, particularly those of color. It chronicles the impact of mass incarceration on families, living on the outside, with relatives on the inside. According to a report entitled “Children of Incarcerated Parents,” in 2007 America was home to 1.7 million children (under 18) whose parent was being held in state or federal prison – that is 2.3 percent of American children will likely be celebrating father’s day away from dad. Despite hegemonic clamoring about family values, the prison industrial complex continues to ravage American families. Since 1991, the number of children with a father in prison has increased from 881,500 to 1.5 million in 2007. Over this same time period, children of incarcerated mothers increased from 63,900 to 147,400. Roughly half of these children are younger than 9, with 32 percent between the ages of 10 and 14. This reality is not just about children but about families forced to live at a crossroads between lack – of contact, lack of physical contact – and desire – to be free, to touch, to be with family. It is a reality that separates families and pushes members farther and farther apart. On average, children live 100 miles away from their incarcerated parents. This is the same of partners, and other family members, who are dislocated, punished and literally left out in the cold.

Chronicling the story of Ruby and Derek (Omari Hardwick) Middle of Nowhere shines a spotlight on trickle down incarceration, whereupon arrests and imprisonment travel downstream to the detriment of both families and communities. From Ruby’s conflict with her mother over her decision to wait for her husband to be released from prison to her choice to forgo medical school for a career in nursing because of their financial needs; from Derek’s inability to pay child support to his daughter’s mom, to the amount of time families must spend on buses just to remain connected to their loved ones; Middle of Nowhere brilliantly reveals the costs and consequences of mass incarceration. Derek is literally stuck in the middle of nowhere, detached geographically, physically, emotionally – he cannot see his daughter; his wife cannot kiss him. With no his release precarious at best and his future bleak given the lifetime sentences resulting from felony convictions, Derek is resigned to the middle of nowhere, existing without any paths toward freedom or even existence. It is not just Derek and his fellow incarcerated men and women housed in places like Victorville are confined to the middle of nowhere, hidden behind barbered wire fences, walls, and isolation, but their families as well.

Look around: As Mary Kosut, an associate professor at Purchase College, has written, “America has become a tattooed nation.” Indeed, our shared ink transcends race, class, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, ideology, and even our sports loyalties. According to a 2012 Harris Poll, 20 percent of Americans have ink; the visibility in today’s world is startling. In kids’ culture—tattooed Barbie—and popular/sports culture and politics, tattoos are almost as mainstream as the iPhone or apple pie.

The ubiquity of ink has made me wonder about prevalence of tattoos among college faculty. Given the stereotypes of tweed jackets and bookworm glasses, and those of tatted bikers and inked basketball players, how much does the tattooed professor violate social expectations?

There is no question that professors are frequently tatted. Within my own department, at least six of us, out of 14 faculty, have ink. (Before we merged with another department, six out of eight had tattoos.) While at a certain level, tattoos represent novelty for us, there is more. As scholars within the field of ethnic studies, we are always the “others.” That is especially true for my colleagues of color, and those GLBT scholars within ethnic studies and the academy at large.

The inked body, already questioned, suspect, even undesirable, represents an effort to reassert power and control. My work is interdisciplinary and often crosses the border of race, religion, and culture. A couple of years back, while attending a Jewish-studies conference, I was questioned about tattoos, reminded over and over again that ink and Jewishness are incompatible. For many, my tatted body made me an outsider. With each comment, I rolled up my sleeves to reveal more of my tatted arms, trying hard to reassert myself.

Although tattoos operate as ritual, as a method of memorializing significant life moments or articulating group membership, they are at their core about reasserting control over one’s body, which—because of the demands of work, consumer culture, and unattainable beauty standards—is increasingly illusive. As we are adorned with logos, assailed by images of how to look and dress, how to style one’s hair, and subjected to messages about what is proper, control over our bodies is a dream continuously deferred. Tattoos challenge that dehumanizing reality.

This is not the first time I have written an open letter to you, and clearly my previous letters have not had the necessary impact. Despite history lesson after history lesson, from a myriad of people, certain sh*t continues. Despite reminders that Blackface is never funny, the “N-Word” should never be uttered in any context, and making jokes about racial violence, domestic violence, or sexual violence is never okay. They are all forms of violence that continue to be perpetuated and celebrated each and every day. While the racism, sexism, and homophobia evident in these social spaces and at GOP political rallies are nothing new, the justification, the denial, and the overall societal complacency about racism (and sexism) because our president is black, speaks to a broader issue confronting America.

I know how hard conversations about race can be, and how invariably these conversations lead to claims about the “race card” or it being “just a joke,” and I know the defensiveness that ensues, but if not now, when? Today I read about a horrible and disheartening example of American racism. At a pep rally at Waverly High School, which is located in Upstate New York and is 97% white, three white students decided to put on a skit involving blackface, simulation of domestic violence, and a disgusting level of callousness. The sight of students in blackface, as if that makes them look like Chris Brown and Rihanna as opposed to Al Jolson and Shirley Temple, is yet another reminder that we have a long way to go with race. And when I say “we,” I mean white America. The sight of a skit designed to mock and find humor in domestic violence is evidence of a misogynistic culture that sanctions and promotes violence against women. Within the United States, a woman is assaulted or beaten every 9 seconds; “Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women.” In fact, 1 in 5 teenage girls reports having a boyfriend who threatened violence at the prospects of a breakup. So spare me “it’s just a joke” or “relax” responses. It isn’t funny; is reprehensible, sickening, and should be condemned nationwide. And while “it” is the skit and the response (yes, those in the comments section), it is also a racist and sexist culture that perpetuates these daily examples of violence. I am angry and wonder why you aren’t similarly outraged, so I am going to make it plain.

There is no acceptable reason to ever don Blackface. It’s not a joke, it ain’t funny, and it’s not some creative license that adds to the value of your artistic endeavors. Blackface has a long tradition that is part and parcel with white supremacy. It is part of a history of dehumanization, of denied citizenship, and efforts to rationalize, excuse, and justify state violence. From lynchings or mass incarceration, white supremacy has utilized dehumanization as part of its moral and legal justification for violence. Spare me your reference to “White Chicks,” the Chappelle Show. Stop with your references to satire. Spare me your dismissive arguments about intent and not being racially motivated. Blackface is part of the violent history of white supremacy. If you don’t know, now you know, and if you still don’t know, go here or here.